Fighting wildfires has changed in some ways over the last 100 years. We have firefighting aircraft, chain saws, better modes of transportation, and better pumps, but we’re still fighting fire with sharpened pieces of metal attached to the ends of sticks.
Weather.com assembled a collection of 82 photos that gives us an idea what it must have been like fighting wildfires and structure fires a hundred years ago. Here are a couple of examples — you can see the rest HERE.
And engine from the state of South Dakota positions to attack the fire.
On a day when weather conditions were flirting with Red Flag Warning criteria, firefighters on Wednesday stopped the Argyle Road Fire north of Hot Springs, South Dakota after it burned approximately five acres. The personnel on scene from Hot Springs, Custer, Argyle, and the Forest Service were dealing with a temperature of 38 degrees and winds measured at Elk Mountain (north of the fire) of 23 mph with gusts to 49.
The fire was burning in an area that had been slightly thinned, but the slash was still scattered on the ground.
It is likely that the fire, which was on private land south of Argyle Road seven miles west of US Highway 385, started from the power line that was on the ground near the point of origin, apparently recently broken.
All of the photos were taken by Bill Gabbert.
Two engine crews from the Hot Springs FD attack the fire.An engine from Hot Springs, SD FD refills from the Hot Springs water tender.
The Red Flag Warning map is interesting today, with the only warning area being in the southwest corner of North Dakota, in effect from late Wednesday morning through early evening. It is another example of weather conditions, as reported by the National Weather Service, being affected by state boundaries.
Greater Black Hills wind forecast November 18, 2015. Parts of SD, WY, MT, ND, & NE.
Here is the weather forecast for the center of the Red Flag Area in North Dakota; what it does not include is the relative humidity, which is predicted to be 35 to 45 percent:
A chance of rain and snow showers before 2pm, then a chance of snow showers between 2pm and 4pm. Mostly cloudy, then gradually becoming sunny, with a temperature falling to around 28 by 5pm. Windy, with a northwest wind 26 to 31 mph increasing to 40 to 45 mph in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 65 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. Total daytime snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible.
And below, the forecast for northwest Wyoming (RH 35 percent):
A slight chance of rain showers, mixing with snow after 2pm, then gradually ending. Partly sunny, with a temperature falling to around 31 by 5pm. Very windy, with a northwest wind 29 to 34 mph increasing to 39 to 44 mph in the morning. Winds could gust as high as 60 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%.
And northwest South Dakota (RH 33 percent):
Isolated showers before 9am. Partly sunny, with a temperature falling to around 32 by 5pm. Very windy, with a northwest wind 28 to 38 mph increasing to 39 to 49 mph in the morning. Winds could gust as high as 70 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%.
As you can see in the map below, the peak wind gusts recorded at around 8 a.m. MST on Wednesday were in the 40s and 50s in western Montana and northwest South Dakota. Much of western Wyoming was in the same boat. There was a 71 mph gust at Cheyenne, Wyoming.
The high wind speeds are caused by a strong cold front moving through the area, which may not have reached full strength in North Dakota at 8 a.m.
Peak wind gusts at 8 a.m. MST, November 18, 2015.
Apparently the NWS weather forecasters in these areas disagreed about how to evaluate the very strong winds balanced with the chance of precipitation, and then how to decide if conditions met the Red Flag criteria.
We have gotten the impression over the years that there is a lot of subjectivity that goes into Red Flag Warnings. The criteria for determining the Warnings is supposed to be very cut and dried and objective, and varies from area to area based on historical weather and fuels. But it is not uncommon to see the boundaries for Red Flag Warnings end at state lines even though conditions and forecasts may be very similar on both sides of those imaginary lines.
The Red Flag map was current as of 8:00 a.m. MDT on Wednesday. Red Flag Warnings can change throughout the day as the National Weather Service offices around the country update and revise their forecasts and maps. For the most current data visit this NWS site or this NWS site.
Police in Western Australia have confirmed that four people have been killed in a vegetation fire in Western Australia on the south coast near Esperance. It is feared that two more may have also died.
From ABC.net:
…Fire and Emergency Services Regional Superintendent Trevor Tasker said the blaze at Salmon Gums was the worst he had ever seen.
“The wind and weather conditions … there was no stopping it,” he said.
Two of those killed are believed to be a farmer and one of his workers from Salmon Gums.
Superintendent Tasker said they are thought to have they crashed a car while trying to flee their farm.
“We believe that may be the case, but we really can’t say for sure,” he said.
There are four fires burning in the region, but the two most serious are at Grass Patch and Salmon Gums, 100 kilometres north of Esperance and at Stockyard Creek, 25 kilometres east of the town…
Stephen Pyne, prolific author about wildland fire world-wide, has released a book covering what he calls America’s fire revolution. Mr. Pyne had not written at length about fire management in the United States since 1980 when he published Fire in America: a Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire.
Much of Mr. Pyne’s knowledge of wildland fire came from spending 15 seasons on the ground with the North Rim Longshots in Grand Canyon National Park. He explains that since 1980 most of his work has involved fire on other continents (six of them as a matter of fact) and he felt that his “stockpiled capital of experience has leached away”. He began to re-immerse himself in the current realm of wildfire in America, leading to this new book.
Much of the information and the examples given in this new effort focus on the U.S. Forest Service. He said it is because “it reflects reality”.
In 1960 the USFS dominated the American fire scene, it continued to be a major player throughout the fire revolution, and it remains the only institution whose actions routinely affect all the rest.
Mr. Pyne writes about a number of notable fires that over the last 60 years had major impacts on management, policy, and the public’s perception of wildfire. One of the more recent blazes was the 2011 Wallow Fire that started in eastern Arizona and spread into New Mexico burning over half a million acres.
Wallow Fire, 2011. Photo by Jayson Coil.
Mr. Pyne writes about the Wallow Fire:
With spots starting three or four miles away, there was little to contain it. Fuels, terrain, suppression, all had to wait for the winds to subside before they could steer the front’s trajectory, The flames burned with the singular direction of a loosed arrow.
Fact that never changes: The safest and least costly fires are the ones that receive strong initial attack and are suppressed while still small.
Reprinted here with the publisher’s permission is the complete passage about Mr. Biddison:
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“…Consider the career of Lynn Biddison, who in 1960 accepted the fire control officer (FCO) position on the Cleveland National Forest. He already had 17 years of on-the-line firefighting experience and was a third-generation Forest Service fire officer. His grandfather had homesteaded near the Angeles National Forest and had became a forest guard at Bouquet Canyon, his father had worked up the ranks through the CCC fire program to become assistant FCO on the Angeles, and Lynn had begun work as a firefighter in 1943 at age 16.
Before he retired, Lynn Biddison had worked in nearly every position in the fire organization. In 1950 he was a crew foreman of the Chilao Hotshots in their second year, and he acceded to superintendent the next year. Then he supervised an inmate crew. He pioneered helijumping, the Southern California equivalent of smokejumping. Later, he was the Region 5 representative to the first national fire-behavior training course in Missoula in 1958. While on the Cleveland, he established the first standing forest-overhead teams, and he himself joined interregional teams. In 1968 he carried the California methods to the Southwest Region as regional fire director.
What he knew he learned early. His bosses were tough, direct, old-school bulls-of-the-woods and extraordinary teachers. “They were firm, they were fair, they knew what they wanted, and they knew their limitations. Their style was, ‘This is the way we’re going to do it, we will do it right, and do it now.’” You did your job. To illustrate, he recalls the 1952 Meadows fire on a Mt. San Gorgonio ridge at 10,000 feet amid Santa Ana winds. The district ranger pointed the fire out to them, and the Chilao Hotshots hiked in. They remained for 11 days. They had one blanket for every two crewmen, so they dug pits where they could light fires for cooking and sleeping. They had little food. Every few days a pack string would bring in water and rations.It was late October and “cold, cold, cold.” They stayed with the burn until it was dead out.
Thirteen years later Biddison returned to California as regional fire director. When mandatory retirement forced him out, he left with the exhortation to return to tried-and-true basics. That meant never having a fire, once contained, escape. It meant instilling a sense of urgency, critiquing actions on every fire regardless of size, and boring in and bearing down on standards, because high goals and hard work sparked pride. It meant “if the fire runs out, DO NOT GIVE UP—back up and start again.” Or simply, “FIGHT FIRE AGGRESSIVELY.”
In 1998 he distilled the lessons of his long career into one simple “fact that never changes: The safest and least costly fires are the ones that receive strong initial attack and are suppressed while still small.” ”
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Between Two Fires, by Stephen J. Pyne, was published in October, 2015 by the University of Arizona Press.
After creating hellish air quality conditions for ten weeks, the wildland fires in Indonesia have been knocked down by heavy monsoon rains. Some residents said they had not seen the sun during that time while the fires burned 5.1 million acres (8,063 square miles), caused 21 deaths, sickened more than half a million people with respiratory problems, and caused $9 billion in economic losses including damaged crops and hundreds of cancelled flights.
Many of the fires are burning in peat, deep underground, and are extremely difficult to completely extinguish. One of the tactics employed is digging a massive trench around the perimeter and keeping it filled with water until the fire goes out. Obviously this is very labor intensive and costly, and demands an almost unlimited supply of water.
Typically the rains will stop after the first of the year and locals expect that by the third week of February fires will again become a problem. Some of the peat fires, after hibernating during the monsoon, will become more active, and landowners will resume clearing land by setting fires.
Earlier in November, in an effort to help mitigate the disaster, the United States contributed four technical experts and 5,000 sets of gloves, shirts, jeans, hand tools, and safety goggles. The shipment, organized by USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, was described by the U.S. Forest Service as “the largest US international fire supply support ever”.
Most of the fires are started intentionally, and illegally, by landowners who want to increase the value of their property before they sell it to companies who will produce palm oil or pulp. Fees from the sale of the land goes to several different groups — the term “land mafia” has been used.
…The worst part is that often, the burned area covers flammable peatlands with its ability to snare fire, subsequently festering underground for a long time making it impossible to be quenched.
Though this act of burning land is strictly allowed for up to 2 hectares only, landowners and farmers do not even care. In fact, together with local government and capitalist corporations, they are the ones who make profitable business over this hazardous fire game.
In Indonesia, there is something called “land economic fee.” Meaning, local farmers who sell their land to corporate plantations will get a much higher price if the land is already burned, since it’s considered “ready to be planted.” To put this in perspective, unburned land is worth $640 per hectare, while burned land is valued at $820 per hectare.
In fact, the sales fee is like a fresh pie. Landowners, land marketers, the farmers group, and workers each get their own piping hot slice. Local governments even reserve a 10 percent to 13 percent stake of the fee to compensate their given authorities. In reality, this seemingly eco-disaster is indeed a man-made fire game. Nothing can stop this deadly haze without switching off the source of flame: the land mafia practice.
More information: photo of elephants helping firefighters transport fire hose and portable pumps.
Fighting wildfires has changed in some ways over the last 100 years. We have firefighting aircraft, chain saws, better modes of transportation, and better pumps, but we’re still fighting fire with sharpened pieces of metal attached to the ends of sticks.
